Forrest Leo - The Gentleman

‘Where did you learn to do that?’

‘I was a champion fencer at school. Which you’d know, if you’d ever bothered to talk to me.’

‘I’m sorry.’

She does not reply. Nor does she lower her sword. She says instead, ‘Verdict?’

‘He doesn’t love you and is a cad,’ says Lizzie promptly.

‘Seconded,’ says Lancaster.

‘Carried,’ says Hubert.

‘Now wait a moment,’ I protest. ‘That isn’t true!’

‘You chose trial by combat. You have lost the trial. It is proven,’ says Vivien.

‘That’s not how it works!’

‘That is precisely how it works,’ says she. ‘Only, if we were being quite proper I should run you through.’

‘That’s a terrible system!’ I cry. ‘It doesn’t prove anything!’*

‘If you loved me, you would have won.’

‘But I do love you!’

‘Apparently not.’

‘I do!’

‘Then pick up your sword and prove it.’

‘No,’ I say.

‘Then leave.’

‘Excuse me?’

‘Either prove your love, or leave my house.’

‘It’s my house!’

On the couch, even Kensington puts his face in his hands. ‘I mean,’ I stammer, ‘it’s our house! You can’t order me out.’

‘Pick up your sword.’

‘No.’

‘Then you don’t love me.’

‘I do love you.’

‘Then pick up your sword.’

I cross the room and pick it up. Who is this maddening woman? And what has she done with the snivelling creature who so plagued me for the last six months? I turn back toward her. She has not moved. She is standing tall, her bosom rising and falling from the exertion. The colour in her cheeks highlights the colour of her eyes, which is an impossible blue.

‘You’re a poet,’ I say. I do not know why I say it.

‘What?’ she says, and I believe I have caught her off guard.

‘You’re a poet. You never told me that.’

‘You never asked,’ she counters, which is true.

‘Lizzie found your poems. They’re exquisite.’

She says nothing. Her sword is still raised and is pointing straight at me, but her breathing has quickened, and I wonder if I have scored a hit.

I do not know why I say what I say next — perhaps to press my imagined advantage? — and I do so against my better judgment; but after a moment of internal struggle I blurt, ‘They have no structure.’

‘Excuse me?’ she says, eyebrows in her hair.

I try to stop, but I cannot. ‘They have no metre. They don’t rhyme. They have no structure .’

‘Are you actually talking to me about the structure of my poems right now?’ she demands, incredulous. She advances to within a blade’s length of me.

‘No, I’m not,’ I say, ‘that’s my point — they have no structure.’

She strikes at my head. ‘They don’t NEED structure!’

I parry without thinking and cry, ‘Everything needs structure!’

‘Poetry doesn’t,’ she says, lunging.

I sweep her thrust to my left. ‘That’s absurd,’ I say.

‘You’re absurd!’ she cries, attacking with a flurry of overhead blows. ‘Poetry is not precise! Poetry exists only to capture everything that CAN’T be captured. Putting it in blank verse doesn’t make it any more capturable, it just makes it look pretty on a page.’

I manage somehow to come through the hailstorm unscathed, and say, ‘You realise you’re spitting in the face of five hundred years of genius.’

‘No,’ she says, sword raised but not attacking, ‘I’m suggesting that for five hundred years people haven’t considered that they might be missing something.’*

‘You’re impossible,’ I say.

She looks at me. ‘ You’re calling me impossible?’

‘YES!’ I say. ‘You put words together so beautifully, but you do so in a wilfully sloppy fashion.’

‘IT’S NOT SLOPPY!’

‘IT IS SLOPPY!’ I surprise us both by attacking. It is an ungainly, lumbering sort of attack — but it is an attack all the same. She wards it off with no ado whatever and counters. For a few moments we advance and retreat in turns, in a reasonable facsimile of a fencing match.

I don’t know why we’re fighting. I forget why we’re yelling at each other about poetry. All I want to do in the world is pick her up and spin her around and kiss her and tell her again and again how much I love her, and how sorry I am, and how foolish I’ve been, and how desperately I wish I could take back the last six months and return again to our wedding night and—

‘When was the last time you wrote a poem?’ she demands, breaking in upon my thoughts. I am thrown off and miss my guard and find her sword again at my throat.

‘Don’t change the subject,’ I say.

‘When?’

‘Don’t change the subject.’

‘When?’

‘The day before our wedding!’

‘Why?’ she asks.

‘Because a poet can’t live without love.’

A shadow passes over her face. Her sword point presses against my throat, in the hollow just above the intersection of my collarbones. ‘Why didn’t you love me?’

‘Because you’d never love me.’

‘BUT I DID LOVE YOU,’ she cries, pressing harder.

‘But you never told me,’ I point out.

‘I DID WHEN YOU ASKED ME TO MARRY YOU AND I SAID YES.’ I feel a trickle of blood.

‘Obliquely,’ I mutter.

Vivien has regained her cool. She drops her arm to her side; the tip of her sword cuts a line in the carpet. ‘There is nothing oblique about a proposal accepted.’

I cannot argue with the soundness of her reasoning, so I change tacks. ‘Why did you tell your brother that you loved me?’

‘Because I did.’

‘Only at first.’

‘No,’ she says. ‘I loved you.’

‘Yes, I know, but then you stopped loving me.’

‘No I didn’t.’

My heart is beating very quickly. ‘What do you mean?’

‘What do you mean what do I mean?’ she demands. ‘I feel as though I’m being extraordinarily clear.’

‘So—’ I can hardly form the words. ‘So you still love me.’

She does not say anything, but there is something in her face.

‘You do!’ I cry. ‘You still love me!’

She again says nothing.

‘I love you,’ I say.

Still she does not speak. Her knuckles are white upon her sword hilt. I do not know if she is about to kiss me or skewer me.

‘I’m serious,’ I say. ‘I love you. I think I’ve always loved you.’

‘You’ve demonstrated it poorly,’ she says.

‘I know. I’m sorry. Please take me back.’

She stares at me, as if waiting for something. I stare back. Her eyes are—

‘Is that it?’ she says. She sounds angry. Her sword arm is rising.

‘What do you mean?’

Her voice is withering. ‘You. Sold me. To. The. Devil . And your apology consists of “I’m sorry, please take me back”?’

‘Brevity is the soul of wit,’ I suggest.

‘DON’T QUOTE POLONIUS AT ME, YOU STUPID MAN.’ She falls upon me with three overhead blows in rapid succession from her left side to my right. I counter them all, and she draws back like a serpent.

‘Viv, look—’

‘Don’t call me Viv.’

‘Mrs Savage,’ I say, and she glares at me. ‘Vivien! Please. Listen to me.’

She has no intention of doing so. Instead she raises her blade to her face, examining it minutely for damage, and asks, ‘Is this about your pride? Did I wound it by not falling at your feet?’

‘You wounded my pride by letting me marry you for your money.’

‘That makes no sense,’ she says, returning her attention from her sword to me. Her eyes are steely, I pun to myself.

‘So why didn’t you say no?’